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argent_ 's review for:
City of Miracles
by Robert Jackson Bennett
How can I not describe this book as miraculous?
As a fairly experienced reader of the fantasy genre, I often feel like new books I pick up will offer me little more than a pleasant experience - themes and character archetypes do repeat, after all. And even after being proven crushingly wrong in this regard by the previous two books in The Divine Cities series (because they were incredibly good), I still went into this one with a vague expectation of mediocrity. And, boy, was I wrong!
City of Miracles felt like a colossal improvement over [book:City of Blades|23909755], and I already like Blades plenty. But much about Miracles was reminiscent of the [book:City of Stairs|20174424] - familiar characters, familiar settings. It felt better overall. I do feel like most of the ending was foreshadowed a little heavily (I guessed a lot, though not all, of how the book was going to end fairly early on, and I am bad at picking up foreshadowing), but I don't think it took much away from the experience. The last... oh, maybe quarter of the book were so packed with action and emotion, and they were so well written, I barely minded that much of what I suspected would happen did happen.
Trilogies are hard, I imagine. First books carry the responsibility of gripping the reader well enough to make them invest resources not only once, in reading the book, but the twice, in making sure they come back for the sequel. Middle books need to meet the high expectations the first book has set, and maybe even exceed them, as a lot of readers will tend to remember the first installment fondly. But final books... final books in trilogies have it hard. They need to not only stand well enough on their own, they need to provide closure to the entire trilogy. And City of Miracles does it beautifully.
As a fairly experienced reader of the fantasy genre, I often feel like new books I pick up will offer me little more than a pleasant experience - themes and character archetypes do repeat, after all. And even after being proven crushingly wrong in this regard by the previous two books in The Divine Cities series (because they were incredibly good), I still went into this one with a vague expectation of mediocrity. And, boy, was I wrong!
City of Miracles felt like a colossal improvement over [book:City of Blades|23909755], and I already like Blades plenty. But much about Miracles was reminiscent of the [book:City of Stairs|20174424] - familiar characters, familiar settings. It felt better overall. I do feel like most of the ending was foreshadowed a little heavily (I guessed a lot, though not all, of how the book was going to end fairly early on, and I am bad at picking up foreshadowing), but I don't think it took much away from the experience. The last... oh, maybe quarter of the book were so packed with action and emotion, and they were so well written, I barely minded that much of what I suspected would happen did happen.
Trilogies are hard, I imagine. First books carry the responsibility of gripping the reader well enough to make them invest resources not only once, in reading the book, but the twice, in making sure they come back for the sequel. Middle books need to meet the high expectations the first book has set, and maybe even exceed them, as a lot of readers will tend to remember the first installment fondly. But final books... final books in trilogies have it hard. They need to not only stand well enough on their own, they need to provide closure to the entire trilogy. And City of Miracles does it beautifully.